05 May 2011

Hacker Farm - Poundland

Perhaps not fully available yet but here's a place to start snuffling.... There's also this little slice of the olde worlde, which has other stuff... maybe more on this later, the floppiness will need another headbubble to get around.

West country voices occasionally drift up - voices you don't hear often, ghosts of Holloway (Ian and the prison)... there's hidden tinkles and micro melodies that never quite reveal themselves... the hi-hats sound like aerosol sprays... this sounds like music from a country that's just discovered electricity, is still in it's thrall, is wondering if nature could ever tame such a beast...

I know their equipment: the close-miked toys, appendages, shower caps, broken machines... and it does sound like all of those... Steve keeping the beats just in check, Kek flinging himself softly at piles of pure matter... but this is more, er, musical than you might expect... these guys aren't altogether sane or altogether willing to compromise or altogether but... you get the feeling this is a great group, that they've found a way to stitch their two approaches together...

You want superficials? TG is an influence, of course and a lot of this - the violins, the shudders, the leftover electronics and drums; but this is X-TG, none of the Gen(eric) egoings... there's a hint in one section of a West Country version of Peter Christopherson's solo contribution to DOA, for instance... The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death...

Some of it sounds like being inside a giant Zardoz skull; with weapons replaced by cornstalks, sweet wrappers, puffballs...

It's music for a Riddley Walker boar hunt (we're going on a boar hunt, we're going to catch a big one, what a beautiful day; we're not scared....)

Except....we're too fucked to spear, we're rooting for vegetables, snuffling for hallucinogenic fungi alongside the bird squawks (these birds feed on badger carcass)... we're fogfucked, we're wandering...deep in the wud... and there's a glimmer, somewhere up ahead, it's a man with, God, he.... those mirrors, they are blinding... He... shit, he seems to be kicking what looks like a... No... Christ...